Fliers Drop Klan Tracts As Rabbi Preaches Tolerance Towards Klan

December 17, 1923

New York (Dec. 17)

While Rabbi Isaac Landman of the Temple Israel, Far Rockaway, L. I., was trying to soften the anti-Klan spirit of his congregation yesterday, an airplane plying between Rockaways for more than two hours was littering the country side with pamplets which announced that the Klan would continue its fight to make Christianity supreme.

The anti-Klan feeling in the Rockaways crystalized into a boycott after a Thanksgiving demonstration in which several Klansmen attempted to prevent Rabbi Landman from unveiling a soldier’s monument at a church in Cedarhurst, L. I. Rabbi Landman spoke against the boycott in his sermon yesterday morning.

“The boycott is as un-American as Ku Kluxery,” he said. Each in spirit is mob rule. Each in action registers animus which is inimical to good citizenship. Both Ku Kluxery and the boycott resort to coercin and this coercion is a force against which free spirits have always rebelled.”

The pamphlets, one of which was placed under the door of Rabbi Landman’s home, read:

“The Ku Klux Klan is for America first. We stand for benevolence and Klannishness. We are not encouraging or condoning religious beliefs of any kind, but one thing we do insist upon and that is to make this country white and to make this country Gentile. We do not hate the Jews, but the God of the Christians is Christ and we will make Him supreme.”